maintaining power while sport climbing
As we know, there are multiple disciplines to climbing: bouldering, sport climbing, trad climbing, and speed climbing just to name a few.
You may decide that you enjoy one discipline more than the others and choose to specialize in it, or some folks enjoy participating in multiple disciplines. However, each discipline has unique physical demands.
So today we are going to answer the question:
The answer to this is a bit nuanced. The first question I would ask back is: what is the purpose for trying to maintain V12 bouldering power?
There's a big difference between the answer, "I'm going on a bouldering trip right after my sport climbing season" versus, "I'm scared of losing too much power while I pursue sport climbing even though I do really want to push my rope grades."
The answer to this question gives you an idea to where your priorities truly lie and give you better direction for how you want to spend your climbing time.
If you want to keep your power for a bouldering objective then bouldering needs to remain the priority and should be the focus of most of your sessions.
This means you'll have to use sport climbing in a way that supports your bouldering (for example, using it to climb on a lot of different moves, come up with creative beta, work on efficiency). However realistically, it will be difficult to push sport climbing grades.
If you're just scared of losing power but sport climbing is the priority... relax!! It's ok to lose some power while you focus elsewhere.
Similar to strength, you can perform maintenance workouts (ex: project bouldering sessions once a week) to keep it up as best you can. But accepting that there will be some power loss is important.
It's also important to consider the style of routes that you're trying. If they're shorter, boulder-y routes you'll be able to maintain more power than if you're getting on really long, resistance routes.
My best advice is to commit to your priority. If you really want to push your route grades, commit to that! Planning for discrete bouldering and sport climbing seasons can help you make the best choices in your training for those seasons.
